Stephen Keable

iPhone 4 impressions

Posted on 13 July 2010 | No responses

I’ve had my shiny new iPhone 4 a couple of weeks now, after being able to upgrade early with O2 for £26 by trading in my old iPhone 3G 16GB for £172. I would recommend anyone to try this as the value of the old phones is slowly decreasing.

The two biggest things that you notice are the resolution of the display and secondly the vastly improved camera. The display packs a whopping 326 dpi resolution which is higher resolution than most magazine photos are printed in. The camera steps up to 5MP, with auto-focus and LED flash/light also the HD (720p) video option is an added bonus.

Example of the HD footage

I’ll leave you with the thought of, what if the 326 dpi is included in the next iPad at nearly magazine size?

Toy Story iPad App

Posted on 15 June 2010 | No responses

So work have paid for me to have an iPad to use for research and development. I’ve been playing with it for a couple of evenings now, in fact this post was written on the wordpress app. The standard media apps have been downloaded (except the times one out of principal) and they have all been very impressive.

However the most impressive of all so far has to be Disney’s Toy Story digital book app, which is like one of the old books with the sound board that you used to have as a kid. It allows you to either read it to you, read it yourself or even record your own version for playback. Some pages allow you to colour the pages in, allowing for multiple touch so more than one set of little hands can play at once. Click read more to see some screen grabs.

Twitter and TV, perfect companions?

Posted on 13 June 2010 | No responses

Recently I’ve found myself flicking through the iPhone Twitter app whilst watching TV, it began back during the first leaders debate in the run up to the general election. It was was brilliant watching people talking with each other about it across the globe, as it happened rather than the following days at work around the water cooler.

It also becomes a great way to gauge popularity if you run a search or follow a hashtag through the show, as you can see how many posts are made every 30 seconds as the searches refresh.

The world cup has become a great example of this with the launch of Twitter’s own world cup site which uses the nation specific hashtags to filter a running commentary of matches (if you dodge the spam posts). Other sporting events give great live insights and commentary such as Lotus in the formula one racing who post pit lane and garage photos all through some races.

I just wonder how long before all live shows allow a ticker of Twitter posts along the foot of the screen?

BBC New Visual Language

Posted on 8 June 2010 | No responses

In February this year Research Studios (Neville Brody’s Studio) told the world about the new visual language they had created for the BBC. There was a lot of buzz online about this for several months afterwards, however nothing seemed to materialise… until just recently. This year’s Glastonbury and Springwatch microsites on the BBC website seem to be adhering to the visual language and look great. Even if they do seem to break the rules a bit, but then what would designers do if they didn’t.

iPad and the final knife in Flash Player?

Posted on 1 June 2010 | No responses

So the iPad is now available in the UK, I did the habitual trip to the Chapelfield Apple Store to smear my greasy little fingers over one in my lunch break. I’m very impressed by the product, it seemed larger than I expected and makes websites into something tactile at last, they really do sing on that backlit glossy display.

After a return visit and working through a series of websites that I work on, it made me realise how lazy I’ve been when it comes to keeping up with HTML5 and non-flash content (lets face it Flash Player is pretty much dead in the water now). So I’ve now been working back through my sites and making sure alternative content is available, even spent the time re-developing some applications in jQuery.

Black and white skateboarding photos

Posted on 6 April 2010 | No responses

Having been a keen skateboarder since I was 13 years old, one of my main photographic subjects tends to be skateboarding.

Here are some of my favourite black and white photos I’ve shot over the years.

Photos from Latitude Festival

Posted on 3 April 2010 | No responses

Over the last couple of years I’ve been fortunate enough to get photo passes for the Latitude music festival held in at Henham Estate in Suffolk.

I’ve been there in 2008 and 2009 to shoot photos for the Ipswich entertainment magazine and website, Ipswich24. I’ve managed to see some brilliant bands from just in front of the front row, even if it has been with ear-plugs and only the first three songs.

These festivals have allowed me to capture some really big names on camera and some of my most favourite photos, such as this one of Nick Cave. More of my favourites can be found below.